Doblin: Teaneck HS 'prank' more than the folly of youth

SINCE WRITING about the recent student break-in at Teaneck High School, also referred to by some as a senior prank, I have received two kinds of emails: ones that say I spoke truth or ones that state that I am making a big deal over nothing. The latter also suggest Teaneck police made the matter worse than it was.

I have not been in high school for nearly 40 years; I am probably older than the parents of most Teaneck High School seniors, so my perception of what is acceptable teen behavior is from another generation. Senior pranks were not part of the culture of my blue-collar public high school. Neither were NFL-style drafts for prom dates.

I cannot wrap my head around what is happening at Corona del Mar High School in Newport Beach, Calif. The senior guys hold an NFL-style draft to pick the girls they will invite to the prom. As reported by The Orange County Register and the Los Angeles Times, the male students at this affluent Southern California high school pick out numbered balls to determine draft order.

While no one is supposedly allowed to pay for a better draft position, some students may do just that. Girls have the right to refuse. As best I can understand, the guys do not think there is anything wrong with this and neither do the girls.

What happened to romance? A prom date is not a commodity to be traded or bid on. The articles I read on the goings-on in Newport Beach cite the money and privilege of the community as the roots of the problem. Maybe. I am not completely convinced; it is more than that.

What keeps me from buying into the money thing is the reaction from some adults to the Teaneck story. Teaneck is a middle-class community. The parents who live in Teaneck work hard for their incomes. The student body does not drive around in brand-new luxury sports cars. Yet some adults see nothing amiss in a late-night school break-in. They see it as part of a rite of passage. I see it as a rite of passage into a holding cell.

My parents would not have understood how breaking and entering could be construed as anything but criminal and, consequently, neither can I. But many people do, and that makes me wonder not so much about whether the youth of Teaneck will be ready for the real world, but whether the real world has transformed and I failed to notice. Perhaps "blame it on my youth" is now more than a song lyric; it is a legal defense.

Choosing a prom date using the NFL playbook is not totally harmless, because it reinforces a cultural belief that girls are somehow less than equal to boys, who do the choosing. It does not sit well with me, this story of Newport Beach privilege juxtaposed against another current news story: the kidnapping of 276 school girls in Nigeria.

Women do not exist to be pawns of men, and the sooner boys learn that lesson, the better off society is as a whole. Our values structure is completely out of whack. Young people need to make their own mistakes, but adults have to ensure that hard boundaries are in place to protect young people from themselves. Teens cannot do whatever they want without consequences. The same should apply to adults. And of course that is not always the case.

Money often buys a different kind of justice. Young people see that and learn that lesson all too easily. But they are also learning that in many communities parents are willing to create two standards of accountability: one for their children and one for everyone else. What ultimately happens to the 60-plus students caught in Teaneck High School in the middle of the night will reveal which standard applies in Teaneck.

Some readers have suggested Teaneck police wanted to make this situation appear worse than it was, that other municipal police departments were not needed and nothing much happened inside the school. Those are serious charges worth investigating, but they do not negate the fact that police would not have responded to the high school if there hadn't been a break-in.

After the massacre in Newtown, many New Jersey school boards and parents debated about how to make schools safe. There is fear that intruders could breach school security and harm students. But schools must be more than fortresses that keep the bad people out. Schools have to be places where the good is challenged out of students.

All the national discourse about teaching to the test is worthless if, when young people are tested on what is ethically and morally correct, they fail completely. There is a teachable moment in Teaneck, but judging from the reactions I have read from school officials, some parents and students, few will be instructing that particular class. The same is true on the other coast, in a far more affluent community.

Young people in America face challenges, but they are mainly economic ones. There is no military draft pulling them into harm's way. There are no gangs of religious fanatics snatching young girls from their beds, threatening to sell them as chattel.

No, young people can break into schools to celebrate graduation. They can set up a draft to select prom dates.

I don't get it. And I am glad I don't.

Alfred P. Doblin is the editorial page editor of The Record. Contact him at doblin@northjersey.com. Follow AlfredPDoblin on Twitter.